Why the other-race effect matters: Poor recognition of other-race faces impacts everyday social interactions.

What happens to everyday social interactions when other-race recognition fails? Here, we provide the first formal investigation of this question. We gave East Asian international students (N = 89) a questionnaire concerning their experiences of the other-race effect (ORE) in Australia, and a laboratory test of their objective other-race face recognition deficit using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). As a 'perpetrator' of the ORE, participants reported that their problems telling apart Caucasian people contributed significantly to difficulties socializing with them. Moreover, the severity of this problem correlated with their ORE on the CFMT. As a 'victim' of the ORE, participants reported that Caucasians' problems telling them apart also contributed to difficulties socializing. Further, 81% of participants had been confused with other Asians by a Caucasian authority figure (e.g., university tutor, workplace boss), resulting in varying levels of upset/difficulty. When compared to previously established contributors to international students' high rates of social isolation, ORE-related problems were perceived as equally important as the language barrier and only moderately less important than cultural differences. We conclude that the real-world impact of the ORE extends beyond previously identified specialized settings (eyewitness testimony, security), to common everyday situations experienced by all humans.

Trainability of novel person recognition based on brief exposure to form and motion cues.

Fast and accurate recognition of teammates is crucial in contexts as varied as fast-moving sports, the military, and law enforcement engagements; misrecognition can result in lost scoring opportunities in sport or friendly fire in combat contexts. Initial studies on teammate recognition in sport suggests that athletes are adept at this perceptual ability but still susceptible to errors. The purpose of the current proof-of-concept study was to explore the trainability of teammate recognition from very brief exposure to vision of the whole-body form and motion of a previously unknown individual. Participants were divided into three groups: a 4-week training group who were also the actors for the test and training footage, a 2-week training group, and a no-training group. Findings revealed significant differences between the training groups and their improvement from the pre-to post-test on Response Accuracy and Movement Time. The current study found the best performance in the 4-week Training group. The biggest improvement was found in the 2-week training group, whilst no significant improvement was made in the Control group. These results suggest that training was effective, but also indicate that having initially performed the movements as actors may have led to improvements in baseline testing and ultimately the best results, thus physical performance of skills combined with video-based training may reduce the amount of time needed to improve teammate identification.

Making heads or tails of body inversion effects: Do heads matter?

Observers are better at discriminating upright bodies than inverted bodies, and this body inversion effect (BIE) is reliable with whole figures (bodies with heads), but not with bodies presented without heads or the heads occluded suggesting that heads may be key to BIEs. Some studies present whole figures and bodies without heads between groups, and BIEs are not found for bodies without heads [1]. Other studies present whole figures and bodies without heads in the same blocks and BIEs are found with bodies without heads [2]. Does seeing the heads of whole figures induce BIEs in bodies without heads? Here, participants discriminated bodies with either whole figures and bodies without heads presented within blocks, or in separate blocks with bodies without heads presented first. We tested body identity and posture discrimination and measured participants' gaze. BIEs were found with whole figures and bodies without heads in both identity and posture discrimination, and in both study designs. However, efficiency scores were better for the whole figures than the bodies without heads, but only when whole figures appeared in separate blocks. The magnitude of the BIE was overall stronger for whole figures compared to bodies without heads, but only in identity discrimination. BIE magnitudes were similar in the identity and posture tasks. Participants were better at identity discrimination, yet, there was greater looking at heads and less at bodies. During posture discrimination, greater looking at bodies and less at heads was associated with better performance. Faces might influence BIEs but are not essential. Configural representations of bodies without heads are sufficient for BIEs in posture and identity discrimination.

Amplified inversion effects for moving biological stimuli remain largest for faces and bodies.

Turning an object upside-down disrupts our ability to perceive it accurately, and this inversion effect is disproportionately larger for faces and whole bodies than most other objects. This disproportionate inversion effect is taken as an indicator of holistic processing for these stimuli. Large inversion effects are also found when viewing motion-only information from faces and bodies; however, these have not been compared to other moving objects in an identity task so it is unclear whether inversion effects remain disproportionately larger for faces and bodies when they are engaged in motion. The current study investigated the effect of inversion on static and moving unfamiliar faces, human bodies, and German Shepherd dogs in an old-new recognition memory task. Sensitivity and baseline corrected reaction time (RT) results revealed that inversion effects for faces and whole-bodies remained disproportionately larger than those for German Shepherd dogs, regardless of presentation type, suggesting that both static and moving faces and bodies are processed holistically.

Factors affecting infant toy preferences: Age, gender, experience, motor development, and parental attitude.

In contrast to the anecdotal claim that "male infants like cars and female infants like dolls," previous studies have reported mixed findings for gender-related toy preferences in infancy. In Experiment 1, we explored the emergence of gender-related preferences using face-car pairs (Experiment 1a, n = 51, 6-20 months) or face-stove pairs (Experiment 1b, n = 54, 6-20 months). In Experiment 2 (n = 42, 14-16 months), we explore the effect of toy properties, infants' past toy exposure, activity levels, and parental attitudes on such preferences using a wider range of toys. For both studies, infants demonstrated a general preference for faced stimuli over other objects, except for male infants who showed no preference between dolls and cars at around 15 months. Infants' prior experience participating in motor-intensive activities, with wheeled toys and parental attitudes appeared to relate to female infants' preferences for dynamic toys. These results indicate a range of factors influence gendered toy preferences and suggest that nurture plays an important role.

Body Inversion Effects With Photographic Images of Body Postures: Is It About Faces?

As with faces, participants are better at discriminating upright bodies than inverted bodies. This inversion effect is reliable for whole figures, namely, bodies with heads, but it is less reliable for headless bodies. This suggests that removal of the head disrupts typical processing of human figures, and raises questions about the role of faces in efficient body discrimination. In most studies, faces are occluded, but the aim here was to exclude faces in a more ecologically valid way by presenting photographic images of human figures from behind (about-facing), as well as measuring gaze to different parts of the figures. Participants determined whether pairs of sequentially presented body postures were the same or different for whole and headless figures. Presenting about-facing figures (heads seen from behind) and forward-facing figures with faces enabled a comparison of the effect of the presence or absence of faces. Replicating previous findings, there were inversion effects for forward-facing whole figures, but less reliable effects for headless images. There were also inversion effects for about-facing whole figures, but not about-facing headless figures. Accuracy was higher in the forward- compared to the about-facing conditions, but proportional dwell time was greater to bodies in about-facing images. Likewise, despite better discrimination of forward-facing upright compared to inverted whole figures, participants focused more on the heads and less on the bodies in upright compared to inverted images. However, there was no clear relationship between performance and dwell time proportions to heads. Body inversion effects (BIEs) were found with about-facing whole figures and headless forward-facing figures, despite the absence of faces. With inverted whole figures, there was a significant relationship between performance and greater looking at bodies, and less at heads suggesting that in more difficult conditions a focus on bodies is associated with better discrimination. Overall, the findings suggest that the visual system has greater sensitivity to bodies in their most experienced form, which is typically upright and with a head. Otherwise, the more a face is implied by the context, as in whole figures or forward- rather than about-facing headless bodies, the better the performance as holistic/configural processing is likely stronger.

Caricaturing can improve facial expression recognition in low-resolution images and age-related macular degeneration.

Previous studies of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) report impaired facial expression recognition even with enlarged face images. Here, we test potential benefits of caricaturing (exaggerating how the expression's shape differs from neutral) as an image enhancement procedure targeted at mid- to high-level cortical vision. Experiment 1 provides proof-of-concept using normal vision observers shown blurred images as a partial simulation of AMD. Caricaturing significantly improved expression recognition (happy, sad, anger, disgust, fear, surprise) by ∼4%-5% across young adults and older adults (mean age 73 years); two different severities of blur; high, medium, and low intensity of the original expression; and all intermediate accuracy levels (impaired but still above chance). Experiment 2 tested AMD patients, running 19 eyes monocularly (from 12 patients, 67-94 years) covering a wide range of vision loss (acuities 6/7.5 to poorer than 6/360). With faces pre-enlarged, recognition approached ceiling and was only slightly worse than matched controls for high- and medium-intensity expressions. For low-intensity expressions, recognition of veridical expressions remained impaired and was significantly improved with caricaturing across all levels of vision loss by 5.8%. Overall, caricaturing benefits emerged when improvement was most needed, that is, when initial recognition of uncaricatured expressions was impaired.

Can we look past people's race? The effect of combining race and a non-racial group affiliation on holistic processing.

Face memory is worse for races other than one's own, in part because other-race faces are less holistically processed. Both experiential factors and social factors have been suggested as reasons for this other-race effect. Direct measures of holistic processing for race and a non-racial category in faces have never been employed, making it difficult to establish how experience and group membership interact. This study is the first to directly explore holistic processing of own-race and other-race faces, also classed by a non-racial category (university affiliation). Using a crossover design, White undergraduates (in Australia) completed the part-whole task for White (American) and Black South African faces attributed to the University of Western Sydney (own) and University of Sydney (other). Black South African undergraduates completed the same task for White and Black South African faces attributed to the University of Cape Town (own) and Stellenbosch University (other). It was hypothesised that own-race faces would be processed more holistically than other-race faces and that own-university faces would be processed more holistically than other-university faces. Results showed a significant effect of race for White participants (White faces were matched more accurately than Black faces), and wholes were matched more accurately than parts, suggesting holistic processing, but only for White faces. No effect of university was found. Black South African participants, who have more experience with other-race faces, processed wholes better than parts irrespective of race and university category. Overall, results suggest that experiential factors of race outweigh any effects of a non-racial shared group membership. The quality of experience for the named populations, stimuli presentation, and degree of individuation are discussed.

Improving face identity perception in age-related macular degeneration via caricaturing.

Patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) have difficulty recognising people's faces. We tested whether this could be improved using caricaturing: an image enhancement procedure derived from cortical coding in a perceptual 'face-space'. Caricaturing exaggerates the distinctive ways in which an individual's face shape differs from the average. We tested 19 AMD-affected eyes (from 12 patients; ages 66-93 years) monocularly, selected to cover the full range of vision loss. Patients rated how different in identity people's faces appeared when compared in pairs (e.g., two young men, both Caucasian), at four caricature strengths (0, 20, 40, 60% exaggeration). This task gives data reliable enough to analyse statistically at the individual-eye level. All 9 eyes with mild vision loss (acuity ≥ 6/18) showed significant improvement in identity discrimination (higher dissimilarity ratings) with caricaturing. The size of improvement matched that in normal-vision young adults. The caricature benefit became less stable as visual acuity further decreased, but caricaturing was still effective in half the eyes with moderate and severe vision loss (significant improvement in 5 of 10 eyes; at acuities from 6/24 to poorer than <6/360). We conclude caricaturing has the potential to help many AMD patients recognise faces.

Caricaturing faces to improve identity recognition in low vision simulations: How effective is current-generation automatic assignment of landmark points?

PURPOSE: Previous behavioural studies demonstrate that face caricaturing can provide an effective image enhancement method for improving poor face identity perception in low vision simulations (e.g., age-related macular degeneration, bionic eye). To translate caricaturing usefully to patients, assignment of the multiple face landmark points needed to produce the caricatures needs to be fully automatised. Recent development in computer science allows automatic face landmark detection of 68 points in real time and in multiple viewpoints. However, previous demonstrations of the behavioural effectiveness of caricaturing have used higher-precision caricatures with 147 landmark points per face, assigned by hand. Here, we test the effectiveness of the auto-assigned 68-point caricatures. We also compare this to the hand-assigned 147-point caricatures. METHOD: We assessed human perception of how different in identity pairs of faces appear, when veridical (uncaricatured), caricatured with 68-points, and caricatured with 147-points. Across two experiments, we tested two types of low-vision images: a simulation of blur, as experienced in macular degeneration (testing two blur levels); and a simulation of the phosphenised images seen in prosthetic vision (at three resolutions). RESULTS: The 68-point caricatures produced significant improvements in identity discrimination relative to veridical. They were approximately 50% as effective as the 147-point caricatures. CONCLUSION: Realistic translation to patients (e.g., via real time caricaturing with the enhanced signal sent to smart glasses or visual prosthetic) is approaching feasibility. For maximum effectiveness software needs to be able to assign landmark points tracing out all details of feature and face shape, to produce high-precision caricatures.

The relationship between discrimination and memory for spacing and feature changes in houses.

Adults need to discriminate between stimuli and recognize those previously seen. For faces, feature changes (e.g., different eyes) and spacing changes (e.g., distances between eyes) are important cues. In two experiments, we assessed the influence of these on discrimination and recognition of houses, a commonly used control in face studies. In both experiments, discrimination was better for feature than spacing changes. Memory for spacing changes was generally poor but aided by extra learning and intermixing change types. Conversely, memory for features was good, especially when there were few houses, and change type was blocked. Unexpectedly, memory was best for differences that might signal something about occupants (e.g., changes to garden or bins), perhaps akin to hairstyles for faces. Overall, results are consistent with previous work showing poor discrimination of spacing in non-face objects and extends them to show that, unlike for faces, spacing differences are also not well remembered.

Impacts of impaired face perception on social interactions and quality of life in age-related macular degeneration: A qualitative study and new community resources.

AIMS: Previous studies and community information about everyday difficulties in age-related macular degeneration (AMD) have focussed on domains such as reading and driving. Here, we provide the first in-depth examination of how impaired face perception impacts social interactions and quality of life in AMD. We also develop a Faces and Social Life in AMD brochure and information sheet, plus accompanying conversation starter, aimed at AMD patients and those who interact with them (family, friends, nursing home staff). METHOD: Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 21 AMD patients covering the full range from mild vision loss to legally blind. Thematic analysis was used to explore the range of patient experiences. RESULTS: Patients reported faces appeared blurred and/or distorted. They described recurrent failures to recognise others' identity, facial expressions and emotional states, plus failures of alternative non-face strategies (e.g., hairstyle, voice). They reported failures to follow social nuances (e.g., to pick up that someone was joking), and feelings of missing out ('I can't join in'). Concern about offending others (e.g., by unintentionally ignoring them) was common, as were concerns of appearing fraudulent ('Other people don't understand'). Many reported social disengagement. Many reported specifically face-perception-related reductions in social life, confidence, and quality of life. All effects were observed even with only mild vision loss. Patients endorsed the value of our Faces and Social Life in AMD Information Sheet, developed from the interview results, and supported future technological assistance (digital image enhancement). CONCLUSION: Poor face perception in AMD is an important domain contributing to impaired social interactions and quality of life. This domain should be directly assessed in quantitative quality of life measures, and in resources designed to improve community understanding. The identity-related social difficulties mirror those in prosopagnosia, of cortical rather than retinal origin, implying findings may generalise to all low-vision disorders.

The relative importance of heads, bodies, and movement to person recognition across development.

Children have been shown to be worse at face recognition than adults even into their early teens. However, there is debate about whether this is due to face-specific mechanisms or general perceptual and memory development. Here, we considered a slightly different option--that children use different cues to recognition. To test this, we showed 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults whole body, head only, and body only stimuli that were either moving or static. These were shown in two tasks, a match-to-sample task with unfamiliar people and a learning task, to test recognition of experimentally familiar people. On the match-to-sample task, children were worse overall, but the pattern of results was the same for each age group. Matching was best with all cues or head available, and there was no effect of movement. However, matching was generally slower with moving stimuli, and 8-year-olds, but not 10-year-olds, were slower than adults. In general, more cues were faster than heads or bodies alone, but 8-year-olds were surprisingly slow when still bodies were shown alone. On the learning task, again all age groups showed similar patterns, with better performance for all cues. Both 8- and 10-year-olds were more likely to say that they knew someone unfamiliar. Again, movement did not provide a clear advantage. Overall, this study suggests that any differences in face recognition between adults and children are not due to differences in cue use and that instead these results are consistent with general improvements in memory.

Dynamic composite faces are processed holistically.

Holistic processing is considered one of the hallmarks of face recognition. Recent studies using the composite task claim to show a lack of holistic processing for dynamic faces, however they only presented moving faces in the learning phase and tested with static composite images. So while previous research has addressed the question of whether moving faces influence the processing of subsequently viewed static faces, the question of whether moving faces are processed holistically remains unanswered. We address that question here. In our study participants learned faces in motion and were tested on moving composite faces, or learned static faces and were tested on static composite faces. We found a clear composite effect for both upright static and dynamic faces, with no significant difference in the magnitude of those effects. Further, there was no evidence of composite or motion effects in inverted conditions, ruling out low level or other motion signal properties as explanations of performance in upright faces. Together, these results show that upright moving faces are processed holistically, in a similar manner to static faces, extending decades of research with static faces and confirming the importance of holistic processing to familiar face recognition.

Infant perceptual development for faces and spoken words: an integrated approach.

There are obvious differences between recognizing faces and recognizing spoken words or phonemes that might suggest development of each capability requires different skills. Recognizing faces and perceiving spoken language, however, are in key senses extremely similar endeavors. Both perceptual processes are based on richly variable, yet highly structured input from which the perceiver needs to extract categorically meaningful information. This similarity could be reflected in the perceptual narrowing that occurs within the first year of life in both domains. We take the position that the perceptual and neurocognitive processes by which face and speech recognition develop are based on a set of common principles. One common principle is the importance of systematic variability in the input as a source of information rather than noise. Experience of this variability leads to perceptual tuning to the critical properties that define individual faces or spoken words versus their membership in larger groupings of people and their language communities. We argue that parallels can be drawn directly between the principles responsible for the development of face and spoken language perception.

No childhood development of viewpoint-invariant face recognition: evidence from 8-year-olds and adults.

Performance on laboratory face tasks improves across childhood, not reaching adult levels until adolescence. Debate surrounds the source of this development, with recent reviews suggesting that underlying face processing mechanisms are mature early in childhood and that the improvement seen on experimental tasks instead results from general cognitive/perceptual development. One face processing mechanism that has been argued to develop slowly is the ability to encode faces in a view-invariant manner (i.e., allowing recognition across changes in viewpoint). However, many previous studies have not controlled for general cognitive factors. In the current study, 8-year-olds and adults performed a recognition memory task with two study-test viewpoint conditions: same view (study front view, test front view) and change view (study front view, test three-quarter view). To allow quantitative comparison between children and adults, performance in the same view condition was matched across the groups by increasing the learning set size for adults. Results showed poorer memory in the change view condition than in the same view condition for both adults and children. Importantly, there was no quantitative difference between children and adults in the size of decrement in memory performance resulting from a change in viewpoint. This finding adds to growing evidence that face processing mechanisms are mature early in childhood.

Recognition of dance-like actions: memory for static posture or dynamic movement?

Dance-like actions are complex visual stimuli involving multiple changes in body posture across time and space. Visual perception research has demonstrated a difference between the processing of dynamic body movement and the processing of static body posture. Yet, it is unclear whether this processing dissociation continues during the retention of body movement and body form in visual working memory (VWM). When observing a dance-like action, it is likely that static snapshot images of body posture will be retained alongside dynamic images of the complete motion. Therefore, we hypothesized that, as in perception, posture and movement would differ in VWM. Additionally, if body posture and body movement are separable in VWM, as form- and motion-based items, respectively, then differential interference from intervening form and motion tasks should occur during recognition. In two experiments, we examined these hypotheses. In Experiment 1, the recognition of postures and movements was tested in conditions in which the formats of the study and test stimuli matched (movement-study to movement-test, posture-study to posture-test) or mismatched (movement-study to posture-test, posture-study to movement-test). In Experiment 2, the recognition of postures and movements was compared after intervening form and motion tasks. These results indicated that (1) the recognition of body movement based only on posture is possible, but it is significantly poorer than recognition based on the entire movement stimulus, and (2) form-based interference does not impair memory for movements, although motion-based interference does. We concluded that, whereas static posture information is encoded during the observation of dance-like actions, body movement and body posture differ in VWM.

Sex-related preferences for real and doll faces versus real and toy objects in young infants and adults.

Findings of previous studies demonstrate sex-related preferences for toys in 6-month-old infants; boys prefer nonsocial or mechanical toys such as cars, whereas girls prefer social toys such as dolls. Here, we explored the innate versus learned nature of this sex-related preferences using multiple pictures of doll and real faces (of men and women) as well as pictures of toy and real objects (cars and stoves). In total, 48 4- and 5-month-old infants (24 girls and 24 boys) and 48 young adults (24 women and 24 men) saw six trials of all relevant pairs of faces and objects, with each trial containing a different exemplar of a stimulus type. The infant results showed no sex-related preferences; infants preferred faces of men and women regardless of whether they were real or doll faces. Similarly, adults did not show sex-related preferences for social versus nonsocial stimuli, but unlike infants they preferred faces of the opposite sex over objects. These results challenge claims of an innate basis for sex-related preferences for toy real stimuli and suggest that sex-related preferences result from maturational and social development that continues into adulthood.

The movement advantage in famous and unfamiliar faces: a comparison of point-light displays and shape-normalised avatar stimuli.

Facial movement may provide cues to identity, by supporting the extraction of face shape information via structure-from-motion, or via characteristic patterns of movement. Currently, it is unclear whether familiar and unfamiliar faces derive the same benefit from these mechanisms. This study examined the movement advantage by asking participants to match moving and static images of famous and unfamiliar faces to facial point-light displays (PLDs) or shape-normalised avatars in a same/different task (experiment 1). In experiment 2 we also used a same/different task, but participants matched from PLD to PLD or from avatar to avatar. In both experiments, unfamiliar face matching was more accurate for PLDs than for avatars, but there was no effect of stimulus type on famous faces. In experiment 1, there was no movement advantage, but in experiment 2, there was a significant movement advantage for famous and unfamiliar faces. There was no evidence that familiarity increased the movement advantage. For unfamiliar faces, results suggest that participants were relying on characteristic movement patterns to match the faces, and did not derive any extra benefit from the structure-from-motion cues in the PLDs. The results indicate that participants may use static and movement-based cues in a flexible manner when matching famous and unfamiliar faces.